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If you're looking for offbeat fiction, fantasy, scifi, essay, or even rare bits of poetry, you've come to the right place. Enjoy!

Shadow and Shade

"I stayed up all night finishing Shadow and Shade, a fascinating fantasy world of magic, family, and what happens when the two collide. A tough and enchanting tale that will have you listening to the forest and talking to the wolves. I can't wait to see what Gerrard writes next!" Rebecca Cantrell, New York Times bestselling author of The World Beneath

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So why tri?

So why do a triathlon, and why do it now? I’m a big fan of well-rounded fitness. I get bored easily, and I strongly believe that if you only develop one form of fitness, whether it’s running, biking, swimming, dancing, yoga, whatever, you’re missing out on the advantages that the others bring to the table. You also never know how the benefits of one will help the others. The sheer stretchiness of swimming will benefit my running. The breathing, calmness, and body awareness of yoga will benefit my swimming. The cardio benefits of running will benefit everything.

Full disclosure: I used to like running. It’s a pure, simple, graceful sport, but it’s also brutal. They don’t call it pounding pavements for nothing. Umpteen miles and a bad knee later, I decided to go looking for other forms of cardiovascular fitness. Swimming was hard to get used to, but eventually you pass a point where you stop fighting the water and start moving with it. That’s when you’re swimming.

I first got interested in doing a triathlon from a friend of mine named Rachel that I knew back in San Diego. Rachel was a swimming instructor part-time, and was preparing for her own sprint tri that was coming up in a few months. I could barely swim, but I ran in high school, so I offered to be a running partner while she taught me how to swim. On the day of the race, I was overwhelmed with the sheer positive attitude that I could feel coming off all the participants. This was nothing like high school track meets. Everyone wanted everyone to do well, do their best and have fun, plus they got to swim in Mission Bay, use their organizational skills to cut down transition time, and enjoy three kinds of exercise all in one day. What wasn’t there to like?